I recently had a bad monitor failure after six or so years of normal use. Specifically, my LG 34GK950F-B had an electrical failure that, in a limited sense, caught a ribbon cable inside on fire. It is exactly the same failure as shown here, and I add a few images of documentation of my case here.

Anyhow, I am now in the market for a new ultrawide, and I need one as soon as yesterday since my desktop currently has no display - I have been tunneling into it to do anything. General recommendations would be nice - but a few things specifically:

• what is the burn in situation like on modern OLED monitors?
• I would prefer not to spend a massive amount, is that doable while still supporting the following use cases?
  • lots of coding, needs to render text nicely as the top job
  • photo editing, needs to have good color accuracy or be trivial to calibrate such that it does
  • occasional gaming, I don’t game on my desktop much these days, but I don’t want the monitor to feel clunky when I do

This post is a bit stream-of-conscience, so if any other questions or requirements come to mind I will edit it.

Edit: I guess as much as I don’t want to spend a ton, I will also end up using this display for at least another five years - I don’t mind spending a little more to account for that.

For reference, here is the ODbL. There is a nice human readable summary. You can also read more in the Wikipedia entry.

The most famous database available under the ODbL is OpenStreetMaps.

I recently found out about OpenCorporates, which is a global database of companies, published under the ODbL. I thought this was great, so I applied for access to use the database for a project. I was denied because I'm not a journalist or a nonprofit and instead was invited to pay for access instead. And it's not cheap, likely because company databases are often used in the B2B space.

I replied that this seemed to be in conflict with their mission, especially given that my project was focused on using the data to create a benefit to the public, and their response was that they wanted to protect against their database being copied.

From my reading, this seems to be in direct conflict with the ODbL. Egregiously so, which has me thinking I'm missing something.

Does anyone have any insight? It seems to me that the whole point of the ODbL license is to make data freely available. This is backed up by interpretations I came across while searching and by the ethos of other orgs using the license, such as OSM. What am I missing?

I'm streaming Firefox to watch Riverdale, so I opened up Chrome to browse while I wait for them to join. Youtube has ads on it, and I realized I can't grab uBlock or anything (meaningfully) privacy focused. So, I wanna try out one of the cool new browsers, what do people use and recommend?

I'm on Windows and a proper techie, so give me anything that's a bit strange and off the wall as well! The only one I tried out recently was Comet, but it needs more time to bake, total waste of time IME. I remember using IceWeasel for some reason lol

Hi all! I'm someone who has ADHD/Autism spectrum issues and am dealing with problems related to executive function. To the point, I'm asking for help with a specific idea of better managing getting things done.

What I'd like is a job tracker / ticket management system that would make it easy for me to keep track of all the different individual to-do items (I.E. jobs / tickets) that I have, keep notes on what I've already done, and have a separate notes section for 'this is what still needs to be done on this item'.

Currently I have this information kind of scattered through different areas / folders. Calendar, work documentation folders, personal notes, etc...

Needs:

1. Free (open source is nice but not explicitly required). I don't want to add another expense to my balance sheet.
2. Is user-friendly enough to save me more effort than it costs. I am a long-time tech so the bar on this one is reasonably low.
3. A GUI. If there are CLI / command line interface programs that would not be convenient for me, I work much more efficiently when I work visually. If I need to install by CLI that's not a problem, just the daily use of the program should be graphical and not command-line text.
4. (EDITED IN): Locally installed. I want to stay away from adding more company-hosted services which can change / become paid only / otherwise easily undergo Enshittification. If it is locally installed software, I can always decline to update or install a new version.

Nice to haves:

1. A tracker that gives datestamps for when I put in more information so I can easily know when I last picked up that task.
2. A priority system so I can have it automatically sort to top for stuff that needs doing sooner vs long-term projects.
3. Some kind of 'tagging' system which would allow me to tag things like 'personal' or 'work' or 'parts orders' which I could then use a search or sort function to look at only items tagged that way.

My main desktop is Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon in case anyone needs that detail. That is the computer I want to install the ticketing system on.

I've done some searching so far but I'm hoping that by laying out exactly what I'm trying to do with it someone here will have specific advice. My search results so far have found people recommending projects for others who have different use-cases or needs than me.

I work for a GIS company and our tools have not grown with our projects and client base. We use ArcPro personal geo databases (GDBs) for ALL data. We recently had a project where shit really hit the fan, one major issue was related to invalid values from poor version control. Everything uses personal GDBs and is just "version controlled" by dating filenames in Explorer. It would have been trivial to fix in a proper database. We also have operational constraints, like we can only have one person doing X job at a time since all the data for X job is in a personal GDB.

But I'm just an analyst. I've garnered some attention for my technical expertise beyond processing the data. PostGIS is a thing so it isn't as though we'd be recreating the wheel. How can I push for that sort of change? I'm thinking I can sell it using how much we lost on this project because of these avoidable failures. I'm also wondering if I can make this an opportunity to create a "database administrator" position for myself

Can you pivot to other tasks, or are you dead in the water? What about others? Your team/department? Tell us what its like for those minutes/hours.

How often does the internet drop for you (if at all)?

If you don't ever lose internet at work (lucky you!), answer hypothetically about what would happen.

My current computer is finally old enough that we need something new. Something nice. Something that doesn't run modded Xcom 2 at sub 15fps. But the long gap in my knowledge has left me wondering in a state where I don't even know enough anymore to make educated decisions on a new PC build.

Here's what I do know:

• I want a microATX board
• I want a quiet and smaller case
• I want to keep my current Geforce 3060
• My Budget is roughly 1k, but flexible

Past that, my knowledge is now pretty much out of date. Is AMD currently better? Is Noctua still a good and quiet fan? How fast does ram really need to be? Are things pretty standard priced, or do I need to wait for Microcenter to have a sale?

Thanks for your help, appreciate you!

Edit: if this post does not meet the general quality standards of Tildes, I absolutely understand and apologize. Likewise if I should have posted this in a different subsection - ~misc or ~talk maybe?

So, recently I've been annoyed by this new thing in Gmail (and yes, I should be transitioning away from Google services) where this field pops up at the top of my email list called 'Happening Soon'. It mostly has shipping / tracking notifications saying 'hey, this thing with a tracking number is arriving tomorrow'.

I've been annoyed by it because there wasn't an easy way to disable this 'feature' and that perceived loss of agency (and reminding me that my Gmail account isn't really 'mine') was frustration inducing.

So I googled it (I recognize the irony here) - "disable "happening soon" gmail" - and found a Gmail help / community post with a bunch of people expressing the same desire to not have this forced upon them: https://support.google.com/mail/thread/346511942/how-to-disable-happening-soon-for-those-who-see-it-on-gmail-inbox-which-is-related-to-an-amazon-pu?hl=en but while plenty of people shared my frustration, I wasn't finding definitive answers on how to properly disable it.

So I decided to poke around inside of settings. There actually was a section for smart tracking reminders but that was not enabled. Then I saw a rather vague 'Smart Features' that was enabled that I didn't remember seeing before. I disabled that, Gmail had to restart, and then those notifications were gone.

I wanted to share this how-to with all the other people who posted to that Gmail support thread. I simply replied with "To disable this on desktop, go into settings and disable 'Smart Features'. That seems to fix it."

Suddenly I understood why no one else had posted the fix. My post was flagged instantly for 'content policy violations'. Specifically it said "Failed to post. Content violates Community Policy."

Yes, helping other Gmail users figure out how to turn off experimental 'features' we never asked for violates their policy of, I presume, being able to experiment on their userbase. Arg. That ticked me off.

Ok, so my computer is starting to fail in a way I can't fix (never get an Alienware, folks. It's not easily user serviceable, and the parts are very specific to fit in the fancy case so you can't easily replace things when they fail,) and so I'm back on the market for something new. Given the impending forced transition to Windows 11, I'm thinking this is the right time to also switch from Windows to some Linux distro, so I can have all the fun of figuring out a new OS on new hardware.

Given that I'm stepping into unknown territory here, is there anything specific that the fine people of Tildes can suggest/advise/warn me about when it comes to getting a new computer with Linux? I know there's a bunch of different flavors of Linux, and most of the major computer brands seem to offer Ubuntu as a default OS if desired, but I'm just hoping y'all can help me avoid any really obvious pitfalls.

I use my PC for a combination of work and gaming, but the work is all entirely online, so Firefox is all I need on that end. I play a bunch of games, but from what I can see most games can be played in Linux these days?

I guess I'm mostly hoping to not get caught out by anything I don't know I don't know. Help?

Hi, Tildes. Another rambly post in an attempt to get authentic advice. Thanks in advance. :)

--

I'd like to crowdsource your experiences before making a big purchase (a camera made for selfies). If anyone was in a similar situation did you like having your phone and your camera separate, etc. I currently have an iPhone SE 2022 to provide more context.

Why I'm considering buying a camera:

• preserving high quality moments with high quality digital photos of people I'm with, don't care so much for all the fancy settings to get the perfect shot of a landscape (but that's a welcome bonus of course)
• provides a way to be less dependent on a phone
• maybe eventually taking videos or vlogs with it

Why I'm hesitating:

• is a smartphone already enough? + two devices may be a bit cumbersome but maybe worth it for the difference in quality?
• is it annoying to always have to bring it?
• too expensive for what a phone already does?

I've done SOME research as well into this while I've been back and forth this idea for months: If I crack and decide to get a proper camera (without your advice of course), it would be a Sony ZV-1F. But open to suggestions for other models too! It's just to give an idea for people to understand what I'm sorta kinda looking for.

Yesterday I discovered that you can ask ChatGPT what it knows and It will tell you. I’m curious about what it says for other people.

Obviously, don’t post anything you’re unwilling to share publicly on the Internet! For me it seems pretty harmless, though.

The prompt I use is:

What "user knowledge memories" do you have?

Hi, Tildes!

I'm being pressed to pick a present for myself (around 100€) and it happens the headphones I use for gaming at home (HyperX Cloud II) are starting to fall apart after several years of use. Whenever I buy tech, I usually spend a long time researching with the goal of finding the highest price-quality ratio for my budget, something that would last me a long time without glaring issues; but I've been having trouble doing that in this case.

I often hear from audiophiles that gaming headphones are generally overpriced for their quality - something I can definitely imagine - and that you should try and go for a good headset with a separate mic. But despite my searching, I haven't seen anyone actually recommend any specific combo of headset and mic that fit my budget. If I may say, I'm also somewhat starting to doubt the advice of audiophiles: I've seen threads of people saying they didn't sense a difference in audio quality between their gaming headphones and the new audiophile headphones they were recommended, or even that they found it to be worse, and the response was that they'll get used to it or that they just have a bad ear (said a lot more aggressively than how I'm paraphrasing), which is making me think it's more of a subjective difference. Then again, I'm not very well educated about audio!

What I need is a pair with surround sound, appropriate quality for the price point, that will last me a long time and without mandatory crappy software associated. This is for gaming, enjoying music and general use (I've been meaning to pick up some music production casually but this is very much secondary). For the mic, I just need something decent that won't be a pain to listen to for my friends on call and that doesn't cut me out when I laugh or whistle as my current mic does (sometimes someone tells me a joke and then doesn't hear my reaction at all and I feel very bad about that). Preferably one that doesn't take too much space on my desk but I have no scale of that, so I won't be picky about it. (EDIT: to be clear, it can be an attached mic, desktop mic, whatever mic, so long as it works!)

Before considering the headphone + mic combo idea, I was looking at the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 or Logitech G PRO X because both were recommendations I saw, but the former has a fairly bad mic and the latter forces you to use G HUB, which pains me. What is there that's better for this usage?

Thanks in advance!

Subsync is a program that will sync any subtitle file based on either audio or another subtitle. It is remarkably good at syncing any subtitle you throw at it. I never encountered anything even remotely as good as Subsync for that task.

Unfortunately, the author archived it due to some technical reasons as well as bad interactions with users. I don't believe there is anything as good out there when it comes to syncing broken subtitles. Subsync still works, but I don't know for how long. I am not a programmer. I am posting this as a call for help: if anyone is interested in maintaining this program, I think it would be of great help to a lot of people.

Right now, Subsync is a manual tool with a graphical interface. But I foresee it working in the background with programs like VLC, Plex, or Stremio. That would be awesome.

EDIT

Subsync is automated and language aware. It will sync individual lines using audio or another subtitle as a reference. It won't just shift everything; it will adjust them individually. It is usually not necessary to go through the entire file, but you can do it for badly synced subtitles. Adjusting every single subtitle will take more time, but you can do it.

Merely shifting all the subtitles won't work for older TV shows because of the breaks. Depending on the version (DVD, Blu-Ray, WEB, or recorded directly from TV), the ad breaks will be edited slightly differently, with different delay times before resuming the show. That is enough for the subtitles to lose sync after every act. There is also the issue of frame rate and perhaps other video features, which I believe can also unsync subtitles. I probably have more issues with subtitles than most because I mostly watch older or classic TV content.

(Adapted for clarification from my response below)